


Disney's "Tsukishima the Reverse Mermaid"

by Smokey310



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Department store au, M/M, Multi, Threesome - M/M/M, stuck in an elevator AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-15
Updated: 2016-05-20
Packaged: 2018-05-14 02:58:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5727178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smokey310/pseuds/Smokey310
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Hold on a second, I need to locate you first.” The loudspeaker crackled some more – Tsukishima wasn't sure if it was supposed to be a little tune and the quality was just abysmal enough to turn it into alien speak. Then the voice was suddenly back. “You're at Ukai department store?”</p><p>“You couldn't just ask me?”</p><p>“I'd rather interact with our technology,” said the voice and Tsukishima wondered how mean he must have sounded if this person would rather use the brand of technology that gave him this alien speak machine and a broken elevator. “One of our technicians is relatively close-by. It should take about twenty minutes.”</p><p>Great. So he was supposed to wait here for another twenty minutes, like a princess needing to be saved? A very smelly princess with a bag of fish guts as her animal companion. He should get in touch with Disney after this – if he could sell his story, he could finally quit this awful job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rarepairenabler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rarepairenabler/gifts).



> So this is the first part of my personal rarepair-exchange with [siredtosourwolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/siredtosourwolf/pseuds/siredtosourwolf). I'm so sorry for taking the most obvious of your prompts, but... yeah, I'll need to ramble a bit now.
> 
> So in the end-note of ["It's... Batman"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5033308) I mentioned a real life story that happened to me and how I was waiting for the perfect opportunity to turn it into fanfiction. You can't imagine how much I was laughing when I read the prompt "Bokurotsuki - stuck in an elevator", because I literally didn't even think of this and it's absolutely _perfect!_ Like - all the characters appearing in this story can be filled effortlessly with these three. 
> 
> So yeah this is based on an actual true story, with some slight alterations for the sake of story-telling. But yeah - all the crazy stuff actually happened, so please get ready for a wild ride! Actually, most of the alterations are just the dialogue between the characters and Tsukki's snarky narrative - because I didn't hate this job at all, I _loved_ it and I had so much fun during this whole adventure that it was probably borderline perverse. 
> 
> Oh yeah, I should probably mention that fish guts play a big role in this story, so if you have a weak stomach... idk, I just thought you should know :'D
> 
> Also, a big thanks to [Sarolonde](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarolonde/pseuds/Sarolonde) for betaing this so quickly!!!

When Tsukishima had planned to take on a side job and earn some money for a trip around the world after uni, this was not what he'd had in mind.

There were many jobs Tsukishima would have genuinely liked to do. But he had been too slow to apply at the library and at the museum and at the movie theater and somehow he had gotten himself in the situation where he had to call himself lucky to even get this shitty job.

He glared at the cold dead eyes of the salmon he was currently wrapping up in a plastic sheet. The fish had somehow managed to bite him three times today, despite being dead, and Tsukishima was honestly sick of cutting his hands on sharp fins and claws and whatever other unnatural anatomy these deep sea creatures liked to grow. It was truly sad because Tsukishima had _liked_ fish before this job. He thought they were interesting and beautiful. By the sixth time the salmon had slipped out of his hands and almost slapped a customer in the face, however, Tsukishima had realized that fish were awful, mean creatures that held only ill will, even in their deaths. Wasn't it bad enough that he had somehow ended up in the foods section of the only department store their small town had to offer? They could have at least offered him a job in electronics or the book store – at least then he wouldn't be crammed away in the basement with no windows and a variety of bad smells all around. But no, instead he was planted at the very source of the bad smell, despite his sensitive nose and sensitive stomach. Seriously – the next customer who asked him to gut their fish for them would make acquaintance with his face-slapping salmon.

His brooding face must have attracted Terushima from Cheese, because in his peripheral vision he saw a mop of blond hair closing in. Sure enough, when he looked up, Terushima was leaning against the display window of his little counter, smirking at him.

“What's up, new guy? You seem to be a little behind.”

Tsukishima looked around and noticed that most of the other sections had already closed up for the evening. Shirofuku from the bakery was on her favorite part of cleaning up, which was eating all of the leftover fancy cakes out of the freezer cabinet. Aone from the butchery was just loading the last pound of minced meat onto his cart, ready to roll it over to the freezer. Everybody else had already left for the evening, even though it was common knowledge that you were not allowed to leave until everyone was done. Tsukishima had barely even begun yet. The fish section always took the longest to clean up, because he had to decide which of the fish were too old to be sold the next day and throw them away, wrap the rest up in plastic sheets and put them in the freezer, melt all the ice off the selling space, throw away a huge trash bag filled with fish innards, and scrub, scrub, scrub every surface until the metal was shining. The boss was very strict about hygiene, especially in the fish section.

What he had managed to do until now, was... nothing, really. He had wrestled with a Humboldt squid for the past fifteen minutes and finally got it to stay in the metal container it belonged and right now he was fighting his next worst enemy, the slippery salmon. Why did everything here have to be so slippery? The ice, the fish – the smell and the outfit made it impossible enough to keep up an image of dignity, but with the danger of slipping on a stray gallbladder for nine hours straight, he had been reduced to a bumbling idiot rivaling Hinata. This really was a sad chapter of his life.

“Why are you just standing around, then?” he asked Terushima. “Get some rubber gloves out of the drawers and help me!”

“Nah, I don't think I will...” Terushima scrutinized his own fingernails to display his disinterest. “I was just wondering what happened to your cute partner today.”

“Michimiya is sick, so this is my first time cleaning up alone. Don't think I won't tell the boss if you all abandon me here!”

“See?” sighed Terushima. “This is why nobody likes you, new guy!”

“I couldn't care less, now are you gonna help me or not?”

“Not. Sorry, I'm not trying to be mean, it's just... I have a date tonight and I can't risk stinking of fish, you know? It's not very sexy,” he said with a wink, then he turned and strolled over to the exit.

“You already stink of cheese, you hypocrite!” Tsukishima yelled after him. “And that's a hundred times worse than fish!”

It wasn't, but after nine hours of being gnawed on by dead fish and trying not to slip in front of everyone, he was not on top of his game. He looked around for other people he could somehow get to help him, but Shirofuku was nowhere to be seen – she had most likely fallen into a food coma behind her counter. Aone still wasn't back from the freezers, so Tsukishima decided to move on to the second worst part of his cleaning routine. Someone else could wrestle the damn fish. Someone who didn't have to do it every day – then maybe they would see how well off they were in their own non-slippery, non-stinky sections. So really, Tsukishima was only being nice when he left this stuff for someone else.

He drained the sink underneath the space where they gutted the fish and took his glasses off so he didn't have to see any of the gruesome details while he dumped the contents of the filter into the huge trash bag where he had already dumped the too old fish. Bad fortune really crossed a line when it decided to not only give Tsukishima the worst job on Earth, but also installed the trashcans outside, on ground level, so that he had to go on a little Odyssey with a bag of fish guts every damn evening. At least with Michimiya it wasn't so bad – she was fast and funny and didn't have the same weak stomach as Tsukishima, so they were usually able to wrap this up quickly. Had she been here, they would have been finished right about now. Tsukishima started to realize that he was a huge failure.

“Bye, Kunimi!” he heard Shirofuku yell from a distance. Great – so another one was running away, conveniently overlooking the state the fish section was still in. Where had that asshole Kunimi been all this time? He was the supervisor today, so he couldn't just let people run off like that. Well, this just meant that he would be the one who had to help Tsukishima in the end, because he was in charge of closing everything up, so he couldn't leave before everything was done. It was his own fault for dozing off in his corner.

Tsukishima finally reached the elevators in the storage and wrestled his trash bag inside. He had to go up one level to reach the garbage dump in the backyard of the supermarket and it was a nice visualization of how this job put him on an even lower level than a whole garbage dump. Just... why hadn't he applied at the library sooner?

He grabbed his digital badge out of the back pockets of his jeans. Everything here was badge-operated – sometimes it made him feel like he was working for a high-security branch of the government, when in reality he was just taking fish innards to the garbage dump. The elevator doors were already closing behind him as he pressed the badge against the console. There was no beeping sound to confirm his authentication and when he pressed the button for ground level, nothing happened.

Of course the elevators had to be broken right this moment. That was just his luck. Well – for all he cared, the fish guts could rot in here until tomorrow and if his boss decided to yell at him, it would be a good reason to huff out and quit. That would make him feel a lot better.

He had every intention of leaving the trash bag right where it was as he pressed the button to open the elevator doors. The only problem was that they wouldn't budge an inch.

“Fuck, no. Don't do this to me!” Tsukishima cursed, pressing his badge against the console again and punching all of the buttons at once. This couldn't be happening. He may not be the nicest person on earth, but there was no way he had collected that much bad karma. “FUCK!” he yelled, pounding against the metal doors. “Can anybody hear me?”

Of course they couldn't, because everyone had already left and Kunimi had probably fallen asleep on the opposite side of the supermarket. Seemed like Tsukishima had no other choice than to find out what the alarm button on an elevator was good for.

When he pressed it, a loud honk rang through the building – that would definitely startle Kunimi out of his sleep, so he did it again and again, while simultaneously pounding on the door. After some time, he had to accept that Kunimi either had a really deep sleep or had simply left. Tsukishima screamed. There was no way he would spend the whole night in an enclosed space with a bag of fish guts while wearing the same stinky fish clothes he had worn all day. This just couldn't be real. He had to be dreaming.

He continued to press the alarm button, listening to the monotone honk while contemplating all of his choices in life, until the little loudspeaker on the console suddenly crackled and a voice spoke to him.

“Nekoma elevators – how may we help you?”

The voice didn't have any right to sound so bored – sure, sitting in a little cubicle late at night while answering phone calls wasn't a dream job either, but it was nothing compared to Tsukishima's situation.

“Well, for starters, you could get me out of here,” he spat.

“Hold on a second, I need to locate you first.” The loudspeaker crackled some more – Tsukishima wasn't sure if it was supposed to be a little tune and the quality was just abysmal enough to turn it into alien speak. Then the voice was suddenly back. “You're at Ukai department store?”

“You couldn't just ask me?”

“I'd rather interact with our technology,” said the voice and Tsukishima wondered how mean he must have sounded if this person would rather use the brand of technology that gave him this alien speak machine and a broken elevator. “One of our technicians is relatively close-by. It should take about twenty minutes.”

Great. So he was supposed to wait here for another twenty minutes, like a princess needing to be saved? A very smelly princess with a bag of fish guts as her animal companion. He should get in touch with Disney after this – if he could sell his story, he could finally quit this awful job.

“Alright,” he said. “Thank you. So what's your name?”

He'd rather spend the next twenty minutes making small talk with a bored cubicle camper over low-quality loudspeakers than with his bag of fish guts.

“Thank you for calling Nekoma elevators services. We hope we could be of help.”

That said, the crackling of the loudspeakers finally fell silent and Tsukishima found himself hissing, “Well fuck you too!”

This was it then. He was doomed to wait in this small box with nothing but a bag of fish guts as his companion. His phone was far from his reach – three more levels underground, where the employees’ change rooms were located, so he couldn’t even kill his time with some stupid game app. Frustration was gnawing at him worse than the cut-off salmon heads had earlier this day. Right now they were stuffed into his companion bag, probably laughing at him with their dull, dead fish eyes suddenly twinkling. 

Books and movies really had fucked up his expectations. Wasn’t it supposed to be an adventure to get stuck in an elevator? It was probably a good thing he wasn’t in some sort of horror movie scenario where the elevator was moving with his lower half sticking out of the doors, but still… Usually, people got stuck with the love of their lives and it culminated in a big confession scene. Or they would meet a mysterious and attractive stranger this way. This however – he wasn’t sure what this was supposed to be. A tragicomedy maybe. He squinted at his trash bag until he started to see a face in the folding. If he squinted even harder, it looked kind of attractive…

“GET ME OUT OF HERE ALREADY!” he yelled to no one in particular, banging his head back against the wall. As if on cue, the elevator suddenly started moving and for a moment he asked himself if he had inadvertently repaired it with violence. When the doors opened, however, his tragicomedy suddenly drove the plot forward by introducing a new character. The same character that might as well have been the mysterious, attractive stranger he would have been stuck with, had all of this been a romantic comedy. Sadly, it wasn’t. It was still the same story as it was when he started to see a face in his bag of fish guts – except now, he suddenly was the bag. His hair was greasy – hell, his whole person was greasy. He stunk worse than Nineteenth century Paris. The bags under his eyes mimicked the one still lying next to him on the elevator floor – it had started leaking at some point and planted some well-placed pieces of fish gunk on Tsukishima’s ass. Now that he thought about it, maybe he was an even less winsome choice than the gut bag, because at least it had a handsome face.

“Wow,” said the stranger, clearly holding his breath. “This was really not what I expected to find.”

“Well, I’m sorry. You took so long that I seem to have started to decay,” Tsukishima spat. There was no point in being nice and flirty with the stranger anyway – starting with the fact that Tsukishima didn’t know how to do nice and flirty and ending with the fact that he’d rather the stranger disliked him for his personality than for his state of indignity. 

“Is that…” The stranger leaned a bit closer into the elevator light – the rest of the building was already dark, seeing as it was long past closing time. “Is that a fin sticking out of your hair? Dude – what the fuck happened to you?”

“I’m a reverse mermaid,” said Tsukishima, fumbling for the stray piece of fin. “My upper body starts growing fish anatomy when I get too fed up with the world to stand being human.”

“That sounds nothing like a reverse mermaid. I mean, I’m not entirely sure what a reverse mermaid would be, but…” At this point, the stranger couldn’t help but break into laughter. He had undoubtedly held it in ever since the elevator doors opened and it washed over Tsukishima like a wave – partly because it was salty and left him breathless (with anger) and also partly because it was really beautiful, as far as a donkey’s bray could be considered beautiful. Tsukishima started to suspect that he thought of himself so lowly that he lifted this guy to a level he wasn’t actually at. For starters, he had an outrageous hairstyle that was only slightly better than Tsukishima’s greasy fin-sprinkled one. He also wore a red overall, which was about five sizes too big, the sides flopping down in ugly folds. Wouldn’t this be considered a safety hazard for an elevator technician? If the slack fabric got caught in the doors, his horror film scenario might just become a reality. 

Tsukishima decided to gracefully ignore the braying laughter and eyed the technician’s overall with a condescending look. “Lost a lot of weight lately, did you?”

The technician wiped a piece of snot that had escaped from his laughter on his sleeve. Gross. “They didn’t-,“ he was still heavily chuckling and Tsukishima could already see a hiccup coming. “They didn’t have my size. Elevator technicians aren’t usually fit young men like me.” 

True – and yet the only fit young elevator technician in town had to be the one to free him from this almost literal sardine can. Tsukishima found himself wishing the genre would change from a tragicomedy to horror after all. At least then it would be this unreasonably attractive asshole that got himself killed while Tsukishima, as the suffering loner, would definitely survive. 

“So, what’s your name then? I’m Kuroo.”

“Tsukishima…” said Tsukishima, if only so Kuroo wouldn’t get any weird ideas and start calling him Ariel or something equally stupid. 

Kuroo grinned at him. He obviously didn’t need any nicknames to be an asshole. “Tell me, Tsukishima – did you sense that I was here or do you just like screaming to yourself?”

“You heard me?” Tsukishima tried hard not to look embarrassed by that, but he probably failed miserably. Looking like he had been swallowed and shat out by a whale apparently wasn’t a big enough blow to his dignity yet. 

“Of course. Sound travels well in an elevator shaft.”

“I know that, since I obviously heard you.”

“Obviously,” drawled Kuroo. “Well, in any case – you’re free to go. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

“Actually…” Tsukishima said, thinking hard. He was on ground level now. The dumpster was right around the corner. As much as he would have liked to quit this stupid job and walk out, leaving all the fish to rot over night, he was not entirely ready to give up on his dream of travelling the world, so he might as well finish cleaning up, have a night of awful sleep, come back to work tomorrow and slap Terushima and Kunimi with his face-slapping salmon. Besides, all his possessions, including his front door key, warm winter jacket and phone were still 4 levels underground, waiting for him to finish work and change into a less smelly change of clothes. Honestly, he mostly did it for the phone. He really needed to explode stuff with some angry birds right now. “You know what? I’ll just dump this trash bag around the corner and then you can drive me back down.”

“Whatever you say, fish-guy.”

And that’s how Tsukishima ended up worsening his situation by about three hundred percent.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, thanks to [Sarolonde](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarolonde/pseuds/Sarolonde) for betaing!
> 
> Also, I should mention that the story I got in exchange for this one is _fucking amazing_ and you should all go and read it, bc it's Tsukki/Tendou and I can't think of a single person who couldn't need this in their lives! You can find it [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5751667).

The elevator doors opened to the dark.

If Tsukishima hadn't known before that everyone had conveniently overlooked and oversmelled the fish section's state, there was no mistaking it now. In the time it took Kuroo to drive over here and tinker with the elevator, all his asshole colleagues had gone home, even Kunimi, who had locked the supermarket with Tsukishima still in it.

Great. Peachy. Just the cherry on top of the cake. But Tsukishima was long past being annoyed and had entered a state of pure and unadulterated hatred, which left him oddly calm. He had already decided to finish this up, go home and find out how he could use this disaster to his advantage. If he played this right, he might be able to change sections. Kunimi probably wouldn't want this to be made public – it was his fault, after all. Tsukishima would be the hero, who – despite everything – made sure that all the fish didn't rot overnight, which would cost the supermarket a lot of money. Besides, his evening was already ruined and staying here for another half hour to clean everything up wouldn't make it worse.

He was wrong about that, but how could he have known?

Holding on to his angry calm, he managed to wrestle all the fish into their metal containers, and he used the dim lights of a variety of different machines strewn throughout the supermarket to navigate his way to the freezers. He stumbled over something on the way back – some customer had abandoned his shopping routine when the supermarket closed and left one of the little red baskets on the floor. There was nothing but a carton of milk in it. Tsukishima ignored it – cleaning these things up was the morning staff's job. He had enough to do as it was and it wasn't his problem if there was a carton of milk getting sour overnight.

He was wrong about that, too.

Pondering whether he should go to the boss first thing tomorrow morning or if Kunimi was afraid enough of Ukai to be blackmailed, he sprayed the whole section with water from a hose, melted big chunks of ice in the sink, scrubbed every surface and mopped the floor. He was wet from head to toe when he was done, but it was finally official. He was finished. He had survived it all. With a relieved sigh already at the tip of his tongue, he shuffled over to the employee’s exit, which was a heavy door leading to a maze of stairs. Obviously, it was badge-operated, so Tsukishima grabbed the badge from his back pocket and pressed it against the control panel.

Nothing happened.

“No way…” Tsukishima looked at the badge in his hands, understanding only slowly dawning, as if it was afraid of giving Tsukishima a heart attack. He hadn’t… it didn’t even occur to him that the badge could be the problem, he had just assumed that the elevator was broken. But it obviously wasn’t. He pressed the badge against the console again, turning it around, trying every side and angle, but to no avail. The heavy door stayed stubbornly closed, even when he started to kick against it and shook the handle and screamed at it.

He stood no chance. The way to the change rooms were heavily barricaded, as were the escalators leading up to the first floor. Even if somebody was still in the building, there was no way for him to reach them. Except, maybe…

“Sound travels well in an elevator shaft,” he heard Kuroo’s ghostly voice say, and… well, he didn’t have anything left to lose, so he went back to the elevators in the storage and pressed the button. The box still smelled vaguely fishy from the leak in the trash bag, but it was probably nothing compared to Tsukishima’s own stench. He cleared his throat, already feeling stupid.

“Uhm… can anybody hear me?” he yelled.

It only took one second for Kuroo’s distant sounding laughter to reach him and once again, the braying laughter sounded like music in his ears. That was a bit worrying.

“Shut up and save me again, asshole!” He stepped into the box, sheepishly fiddling with his wet strands of hair. He hadn’t looked in a mirror in quite some time, but there was probably no helping it – he looked like shit in front of a disgustingly handsome yet awfully snarky elevator technician and it was so _unfair_.

“You really need to work on your attitude,” said Kuroo, but he closed the elevator doors and drove him up either way. Tsukishima steeled himself for the doors opening again and as he had predicted, Kuroo greeted him with a joyful grin when he noticed how Tsukishima had evolved from Tsufishima into Soakishima.

“Seriously…” Kuroo sniggered. “What are you hiding underground? The kingdom of Atlantica?”

Tsukishima glared at him with minimal effect. “Why are you even still here?” he asked when Kuroo wouldn’t stop sniggering.

“I’m just trying to figure out what’s wrong with the elevator. I haven’t found a single problem with it.”

Right. Because the elevators were perfectly fine and it was all Tsukishima’s badge, but he was not about to tell Kuroo that. “You’re quite the lousy technician,” he said instead, turning around to look down the hall. “How did you get in here anyway? Are there still people around?”

“The cleaning lady let me in,” said Kuroo. “But then she locked herself into the toilets. I think she’s afraid of me.”

“Can’t blame her,” said Tsukishima. “But if she has a key, I need to talk to her.”

Kuroo followed him down the hall unprompted, suddenly very uninterested in the not-broken elevators. “She won’t be any less afraid of you,” he said. “You look like an angry swamp monster searching for dinner. If you surprise her while she’s cleaning the washrooms, she might think you came out of a toilet.”

“Fuck you, too,” Tsukishima said in honeyed tones and continued to stomp down the hall, pretending to know where he was going. There was nothing on this side of the building, except for a lot of closed doors. Kuroo’s flashlight was the only source of light and without it Tsukishima would have probably plunged down a flight of stairs to mark this awful evening with a fitting end. He kept an eye out for a toilet sign, too proud to ask Kuroo for help.

“Maybe I can clonk you over the head with my flashlight and save her. She makes a much better damsel in distress than you,” Kuroo contemplated.

“Weren’t you the source of her distress to begin with?” said Tsukishima. “Between the two of us, you definitely look less trustworthy.”

“You wound me. I’m obviously a prince tonight. If you’re a prince, too, then you haven’t left the frog stage yet.”

Tsukishima rattled on some closed doors just to feel productive. He didn’t really have any hope left to find a way to the change rooms to get his winter jacket, house keys and wallet. He couldn’t go home without those things and he did _not_ want to have to ask Kuroo to take him in for the night.

“You know – the closest thing that relates you to a prince is your hair, because it makes you look like a horse.”

“Hey!” Kuroo deliberately blinded him with his flashlight. “Leave my hair out of this!”

“Touchy subject, I see.”

“I can’t help the way my hair looks,” pouted Kuroo. “Besides, it’s not like I’m making fun of the way you look, either, because I am nice and considerate.”

“You started spewing mermaid jokes the very second the elevator doors opened,” said Tsukishima, rattling on another door. This one opened, but it just led to the dumpster, where his trusted old friend, the fish bag, greeted him with its handsome smile. Tsukishima quickly closed the door again.

“That’s not true,” complained Kuroo. “It was at least five seconds.”

“We just walked in a circle,” said Tsukishima.

“And I think I deserve an award for keeping a straight face for so long. You should have seen yourself.”

“Where did you even come in? Did you just materialize out of the toxic waste from the dumpster?”

“I think you could even say I kept a straight face for ten seconds, because I could already smell the fish even before the doors opened.”

“Because I honestly wouldn’t be surprised,” Tsukishima continued. He hadn’t even seen an entrance door. What the hell was wrong with this shitty building?

Kuroo just ignored him in favor of holding his monologue. “Also award-worthy; me, being able to hold a straight face for a full ten seconds despite not being straight at all.”

“What?” said Tsukishima, finally listening.

Kuroo blinked, his flashlight hitting Tsukishima in the face and blinding him again. “What?”

“For fuck’s sake!” Tsukishima snatched the flashlight from his hands, heavily contemplating if he should hit Kuroo with it. “Where did you see that cleaning lady anyway?”

“Oh, so you’re finally asking! She was in the washrooms right next to the elevator doors.”

The urge to hit Kuroo with the flashlight grew ever stronger, but Tsukishima couldn't give in to his rage yet. He still needed his wits together until he made it to the change rooms. The universe was testing him tonight. At least he knew the way from the dumpster to the elevator, so it wasn't long until they stood in front of the closed toilet door, hammering against it. The faint light creeping out from behind the door betrayed the cleaning lady's adamant attempt at nonexistence.

“Please open up!” Tsukishima begged. He had found that he was not above begging anymore after exactly five minutes of hammering against a closed door. “I just need your keys. I work here – I promise, if you open up, you'll see my uniform and everything. They locked me in!”

“Don't trust him!” said Kuroo, “he's a swamp monster who wants to go home through the toilets.”

“I'm going to call the police!” came a shaky voice from behind the door. Good, at least she was talking now. If she hadn't said anything, Tsukishima probably would have strangled Kuroo.

“Look, Miss cleaning lady... do you have a name? Mine is Tsukishima and that awful horsehead you let in is Kuroo. We don't want to harm you, we really just need your help, okay? We will step away from the door now and keep our distance, and... we'll leave the flashlight here, so you can take a good look at us, okay?”  
There was no answer, but at least there was also no evidence of her calling the police, so Tsukishima laid the flashlight on the floor and wrestled Kuroo to the other end of the hallway.

“We're over here now! There'd be no way for us to run this distance before you closed the door again, so please...” He stomped on Kuroo's toes to make him yelp. “As you can hear, Kuroo's here with me. Please open up?”

He hadn't expected for the door to actually open up a crack. The cleaning lady didn't come out, though – instead there was a mop shooting out of the door, probably trying to hit a possible third party in this very elaborate kidnapping scheme. When the mop couldn't hit anything, the cleaning lady's head finally appeared in the door crack, fumbling for the flashlight on the floor. Tsukishima didn't see more than a blond ponytail before he was blinded by the light again.

“Oh...” said the cleaning lady after she had taken in Tsukishima's appearance. “What happened to you?” Tsukishima didn't know if he should be glad or insulted that she didn't sound afraid anymore. He and Kuroo were like twice her size, damn it. No wonder she had been afraid.

“As I told you – I was locked in.”

“Locked in where?” asked the cleaning lady.

“Atlantica,” said Kuroo. “Anyway, little Miss, could you maybe stop blinding us?”

“Oh! Sorry!” She redirected the flash to the floor so that Tsukishima could finally look at her properly. She was only illuminated by the light from behind her, but he could still see that her hands were covered by gigantic yellow rubber gloves and she was still wielding her mop. “My name is Yachi,” she said sheepishly. “But I'm not sure if I can help you... I don't know what half of these keys are for.”

Somehow, that was a relief – it was better than her knowing for sure that her keys wouldn’t lead him all the way to the change rooms. He may still have a little part of his dignity to save, so he couldn’t ask Kuroo to take him in for the night. Nope. Even if Kuroo would see him after he had taken a shower and didn’t smell like fish. He did _not_ want to spend the night at Kuroo’s place. Not at all.

“Do you know if they’ll get us to the deeper levels, at least?” he asked politely.

“Well… I usually clean this place in the morning with the others, not late at night, so I don't usually have these keys… I think, hypothetically, they should lead downstairs? But – there’s like ten keys and you’d have to try each and every one.”

“Let’s do it!” said Kuroo, clapping his hands. “Let’s go on an adventure!”

“Don’t you have an elevator to repair?” groaned Tsukishima.

“There’s not currently someone stuck in it, but you are stuck in this building if we don’t help you, and – as was already established, I’m quite a helpful guy.”

“You’re a pest, is what you are!” said Tsukishima.

“Tsukki!” Kuroo sounded mock-hurt and Tsukishima hated how he acted as if they’d known each other for a decade. It wasn’t fair. He couldn’t have a guy like this flirt with him, because in the state he was in right now, the flirting couldn’t be anything but condescending.

“Don’t call me that,” he said as icily as he could. It was too dark to see Kuroo’s reaction, which reminded him that their flashlight was still in Yachi’s hands. When he turned to her, he noticed that she was already trying her keys on a random door.

“Where are you trying to go?” he asked her. “Isn’t the stairwell over there?” He pointed in the general direction of where he and Kuroo had just come from.

“You can’t really trust your sense of direction in here,” said Yachi, trying yet another key. “Every door could lead anywhere. This is like Hogwarts. Stairs change direction. Rooms suddenly vanish. You know the drill.”

“Really,” said Tsukishima. He had to admit, the reference to Harry Potter made him take a liking to her, but her method still seemed a bit backwards. “I’d still like to start from where my sense of direction feels right, if you don’t mind. I kinda want to leave this place tonight.”

“Don’t you have anyone you could call?” asked Kuroo as they walked over to where Tsukishima hoped the stairwell was. Tsukishima really wished that Kuroo would just stop talking – he did not want to admit that he only had one friend, who was out of town tonight. “Because if you don’t-“ Kuroo continued, oblivious to Tsukishima’s contemplation of running to the dumpster just so he could free his face-slapping salmon from the bag, “you could just stay at my-“

“This door over there!” Tsukishima said loudly, interrupting Kuroo’s offer. If he had let him finish, Tsukishima probably would have taken it. He was awfully weak sometimes. Yachi hurried over to the random door he was pointing at and tried her gazillion keys on it.

“Maybe you should take off those huge gloves,” Tsukishima told her when she wouldn’t stop fumbling with the keys. “Or just give them to me - that would probably be a lot faster.”

“I can’t just give you my keys! I don’t know you that well – what if you run off with them and stole something?”

“Like what, the toilet paper?” grinned Kuroo.

“I don’t only clean toilets!” Yachi huffed. “I’m also in the… uhm. In the storage room!”

“Which storage room?” asked Tsukishima.

“The… uhm. Well.” Even in the dim light, Tsukishima could see her blush. “The cleaning staff’s storage.”

“So basically a broom closet?” said Kuroo. Tsukishima threw him an angry glare in Yachi's place, since she seemed to be too intimidated to do it herself. “What?” said Kuroo, shrugging. “It's not even that unlikely that you would run off for the broom closet and soak in a bucket of air freshener.”

“I swear to God, if you don't shut the fuck up-”

His threat got interrupted by Yachi's loud cheering as the last key finally turned in the lock. “I did it!” she beamed. “Now we just hope that it's actually the stairwell...”

She opened the door to... well. It was not stairs. It wasn't even the building anymore. Tsukishima and Kuroo followed her out onto a parking lot in stunned silence.

Wherever they were looking, there were parked police cars, illuminating the parking lot with hectic blue and red lights.

“Well shit,” said Kuroo, his eyes widening. “Yachi was right... these doors really are magic.”

“I am dreaming, aren't I?” laughed Yachi. “This isn't actually happening?”

Tsukishima didn't say anything – he didn't want to burst their bubble. This was all his fault. He had told himself time and time again that it couldn't get worse and made some pretty stupid decisions based on that mantra. Now they were standing here, a soaking wet reverse mermaid, a miniature cleaning lady with gigantic yellow rubber gloves, and a horsehaired elevator technician in a floppy overall, arousing the attention of a whole parking lot of policemen, all running towards them at the same time.

“Hands up!” they shouted. Tsukishima wasn't sure if he really saw a gun pointed at him or if he was just dreaming. He slowly raised his hands. “Step away from the door!”

Yeah, Tsukishima thought. This night definitely just got worse.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *gasp* I'm actually updating this fic, I can't even believe it! I guess my writer's block is officially beat, hallelujah!
> 
> Once again, I have to thank the awesome [sarolonde](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarolonde/pseuds/Sarolonde) for reading over this in record time. Please read all of her stuff, for it is amazing!
> 
> Ok then, I'll leave you in the hands of hot cop Bokuto for now!

Half an hour earlier, there was an uproar at the local police station.

For the first time in possibly forever, the police had an actual case to take care of. The alarm at the department store had gone off – and it wasn't just any department store, it was THE department store, the only one they had, and the town was extremely proud of it. It made them feel like an actual town and not just a measly village with two bakeries and one post office. In any case - the department store had the newest and best technology some of these non-village people had ever seen, so it couldn't possibly be a false alarm. Some kind of machine had detected movement in the closed store, so obviously there was a new gang in town, looking to rob their new status symbol.

Despite all of that - when the police headed out to storm the store, they left Bokuto behind.

"It's so unfair!" complained Bokuto for the millionth time in only thirty minutes. "Just because I'm new doesn't mean they don't need me there. Have you seen some of these guys? They couldn't take down a scarecrow..."

"Why are you complaining?" Akaashi sighed. He sat at his desk and worked on breaking his record for minesweeper – not his first game of choice, but the internet connection was wonky, and the computers weren't really new enough to have anything else on them. "They left you in charge. That's a big honor for a newbie like you."

"I don't want to be in charge - I want to be the hero!"

"Then be in charge heroically," Akaashi yawned. "You don't actually think that someone is trying to break into the store, do you? Who would be stupid enough to break into Ukai department stores with all that futuristic technology when every other store in this town would open up if the door was rattled a little too hard?”

“It's probably the challenge that draws them,” Bokuto said wisely. He knew these kinds of thieves. He had seen enough American movies. These people didn't care about the money, they just wanted the thrill. Which is why they would be so disappointed to be met with a bunch of donut-bellied policemen in their fifties, goddamn it. 

“Arrrgh, it's so unfair!” he yelled again.

“Life is unfair,” Akaashi agreed – he had just clicked on a bomb right before breaking the record, so he knew what he was talking about. “But whining about it won't get you anywhere.”

“That's what you say, Akaashi, but I'll have you know that so far, whining has gotten me free ice cream on at least three different occasions, a back-rub from the hot receptionist, and my very own desk-fridge,” Bokuto said, sounding increasingly impressed by himself as he was counting off the things he annoyed other people into doing. “I should whine more often.”

“Guess Konoha was right. You really are an odd genius sometimes,” said Akaashi. “However, I'm the only one who can hear you whine right now, and I can't do anything about your situation, so if you could please let me concentrate?”

Akaashi exploded another bomb right as the cellphone in Bokuto's hands rang. Bokuto was holding a cup of coffee in the other hand and accidentally answered that one first, sloshing hot coffee over his ear before he noticed his mistake, but he was too excited to care. The cellphone almost never rang, so it had to be some kind of emergency.

"Yes, it's Bokuto!"

"That is not how you're supposed to answer the phone," Akaashi sighed and went over to look for something in the mini-fridge Bokuto stored under his desk. "Also, why do you have a raw steak in that fridge?"

"Oh. My. God!" Bokuto gasped at whatever the person on the other line told him. "There's no doubt about it then. Someone must have broken out of the mental hospital to live in the supermarket. You definitely need back-up!"

Akaashi narrowed his eyes at that, but he went to slap Bokuto's ear with a raw steak.

"I'm coming to you right now - don't do anything stupid without me!"

"Most stupid things are only done when you're there," Akaashi said and took the coffee from Bokuto's hand so that it was free to press the steak against his ear. "What exactly is going on over there?"

"Akaashi!" Bokuto beamed, jumping up and down excitedly. Akaashi was glad that he had already taken away his coffee. "Guess what they found when they stormed the supermarket?"

"I'm not sure we have time to play a guessing game right now."

"Oh, right!" Bokuto quickly ran to the wardrobe where he tried to slip into his jacket and boots at the same time. "So they couldn't find a person, but there was one of those little red baskets just standing in the middle of the supermarket, and guess what was in it?"

"Bokuto..." Akaashi sighed.

"No guessing, right - anyway. It was..." he paused for effect, until Akaashi rolled his eyes. "A carton of milk!"

Akaashi wished he had another steak to slap Bokuto with.

"You seriously think someone broke into this high security department store just to walk around in it after closing time - with a little red basket... stealing milk?"

"Well, it's obviously someone who broke out of the mental hospital, you know? You can't really apply common sense to these crimes."

"There isn't even a mental hospital anywhere near here!" Akaashi tried to reason, but it was in vain. Bokuto had finally managed to put his clothes on, even if the boots looked like they were the wrong way round. "Bokuto, listen to me! Don't leave me alone at the station just to chase some imaginary mental hospital escapee, or I swear I will make you the next one!"

"I'm sorry, Akaashi - but my town needs me!" - with that, Bokuto had run out of the door, undoubtedly herding along every stray police officer he could find, leaving Akaashi behind with nothing but a mocking “Game over” blinking on the screen.

“There better not be any bomb threats coming in right now,” Akaashi mumbled darkly, then he sat back down and started a new game.

~~~

"I'm serious - I work here. At the fish section. There must be something really wrong with your nose if you can't smell it," Tsukishima said, for what felt like the hundredth time this evening.

He had never really had faith for the local police station, but seeing their sheer idiocy with his own eyes still came as a surprise.

“Anyone could say that,” the man before him grunted, narrowing his eyes even harder, as if that would make Tsukishima suddenly change his mind. The guy had been grilling him for about a half hour now – he was the old, gruff type who probably thought he looked intimidating. 

“Why does everyone keep thinking that I would go through such an elaborate plan for my crimes? What good would it do to sneak into a department store when you can smell me from a mile away?” Tsukishima groaned. 

"I've seen weirder things," claimed the policeman.

Just where was the face-slapping salmon when Tsukishima needed it? 

"No you haven't," he said. "Stop pretending like you guys do anything except sit on your fat asses and play minesweeper all day long. There's nothing going _on_ in this town!"

Yachi gave a little squeak and even Kuroo looked shocked at Tsukishima's insolence.

"He's got a _gun_!" Yachi reminded him.

"Yes, and I'm starting to think that getting shot would be preferable to all this," said Tsukishima. “We're gonna freeze to death before this idiot realizes that the guy in stinking fish clothes, the guy in a red overall, and the girl with huge rubber gloves are simple working people and not a dangerous gang of perps.”

At least Kuroo could see his point. “Why don't you just try and call Nekoma Elevators? See if they know me there?”

“Because Nekoma Elevators is obviously our headquarters,” Tsukishima said, when the policeman wouldn't react to Kuroo's words. “The whole firm is built on cold-blooded murder. They wiped out their enemies one after the other in order to be the most recognized elevator firm in this town and serve as an alibi for the boss' evil plan – to steal milk from the department store!”

Kuroo slapped his own forehead in a dramatic gesture. “And yet these clever policemen saw right through it!” he exclaimed. “We never even stood a chance!”

“Guys!” squeaked Yachi, just as one of the policemen cleared his throat. Tsukishima couldn't see who it was, since the crowd of policemen standing before them was too big, but just a few seconds later, he felt like kissing the guy, and he didn't even care what he looked like. 

“Look, if anyone here wants to believe that there's some huge conspiracy going on, it's probably me, but... I kinda left Akaashi all alone at the station, and I'm getting the feeling he will kill me when he finds out what for,” said the hero of the night, and Tsukishima had to keep himself from throwing his hands up in the air. 

“Finally, common sense!” Kuroo grinned. “I was starting to lose hope.”

The older policeman, who was still staring down Tsukishima, finally huffed a breath and turned around to point at one of his colleagues. “You!” he barked. “Call the elevator firm – and write down that technician's particulars. And you over there-” he pointed at another policeman. “The same with the girl!”

The huge crowd suddenly started to scatter. Tsukishima could barely blink before Kuroo and Yachi were both in the clutches of separate policemen, who were leading them away to a quieter place. Most of the other policemen went back to their cars, to return to the station. Tsukishima was left with the gruff old man who had refused to see logic for so long. 

“You have some form of ID on you?” asked the policeman. 

“You could dive back with me, to the kingdom of Atlantica, where my father Neptune will confirm my status.”

“Listen, kid.” grunted the policeman. “I really don't have the time to listen to you trying to be funny.”

Liar – he had plenty of time. As this whole misadventure undoubtedly proved; there was nothing going _on_ in this town. But Tsukishima was sick and tired of standing out here in the cold any longer, and it looked like he wouldn't be able to take Kuroo up on his offer anymore. 

“I mean it, though,” Tsukishima sighed. “If you want to see anything from me, you'll have to get me back down there, because my wallet, along with my keys, phone, and clothes, are still locked away four levels underground.”

The policeman shot him another narrow-eyed, suspicious glare, but then he bellowed, “New guy!”

“I'm sorry?” Tsukishima said, but apparently, the policeman hadn't meant him. It would have probably helped if he hadn't still glared at Tsukishima while shouting. 

“Get this smartass kid back to his locker. I expect you to come back with all the required paper work, understand?”

Tsukishima moved his head slightly to the left so that he could see who exactly had reacted to the policeman's shouting. 

“Sure thing, boss!” said the voice of the hero from before, which was incidentally also the voice of the only young, good-looking, extremely buff policeman on the entire parking lot.

Tsukishima's life really was hell.

“I'm Bokuto!” smiled the hot policeman, holding out his hand for Tsukishima to shake. 

“Ah, yes... I'm...”

super weak for uniforms

about to jump you

dead and unsure if I landed in heaven or hell

“Tsukishima,” he finished. “But you already know that, I guess.”

“Won't know for sure until you can show me your ID, right? So let's get to it!” Bokuto grinned, catching a bundle of keys which the older policeman had thrown at him, without even looking away from Tsukishima. 

Well fuck. It would be hard to cover up his attraction to this guy with sarcasm, the way he had with Kuroo. Probably because his attraction to Kuroo was mostly born from the sarcasm to begin with, so their banter had been like sex for Tsukishima.

Bokuto, however... well, let it be safe to say that 90% of Tsukishima's brain was currently occupied with finding out how he could come up with an excuse to touch those biceps. And that ass. And pretty much that whole damn person. 

The other 10% realized with a sudden pang of disappointment that Kuroo was gone. 

“Don't take too long,” grunted the older policeman and then, finally, he stomped away and left Tsukishima alone with Bokuto, aka how-is-this-guy-a-real-policeman-and-not-a-porno-star.

“Man, you sure smell. Sorry for being so blunt. I didn't know the department store had a pet shop.”

Ah – so _that's_ how!

“I smell like this because I'm selling dead fish, not living ones,” said Tsukishima, as he followed Bokuto over to the main entrance. 

“Oooh, I see. Sorry, I just assumed – you don't look like a guy who'd sell dead fish, you know? You're too cute.”

O... kay. So. This was flirting, right? Hot buff policeman was definitely flirting with him. Even though Tsukishima looked and smelled like death, he may actually have a chance with this guy.

“The smell puts a damper on it, of course. So it would be nice if you could... maybe keep a bigger distance? Because I seem to have just developed a gag reflex.”

Aaaaand, it was definitely _not_ flirting, for fuck's sake. Could this night even get more embarrassing? It was like some divine being was testing how much embarrassment Tsukishima could take before imploding. The answer was: Not much more. Tsukishima closed his eyes and stood still, waiting for Bokuto to waltz around the entrance hall and scrutinize an array of barricaded escalators. 

“Yeah, I think we'll have to take the elevator,” Bokuto finally said, coming back to where Tsukishima stood. “I actually have no idea how the others got down there in the first place – I was only the back-up, I wasn't there when they stormed the supermarket.”

Elevator, huh? Great, just great. He certainly hadn't had enough of elevators for one evening. 

“They called for back-up?” Tsukishima asked while Bokuto pressed the button for one of the elevators. “Because they found a little basket with a carton of milk in it?”

The elevator doors opened with a cheerful 'ping', and Bokuto pulled him inside.

“Well, it could have been a mental hospital escapee, you know?” said Bokuto. “You can never be careful enough.”

“There isn't even a mental hospital anywhere near here!” groaned Tsukishima.

“Funny, that's the exact same thing Akaashi said.”

“Okay...” Tsukishima shrugged and leaned against the far back of the elevator, hoping to keep the smell from wafting over to Bokuto too much – which was pretty much impossible since Bokuto was standing about two feet away and already seemed to be getting green in the face as he was trying to find the right key to get the elevator to work. “This Akaashi seems like an intelligent fellow,” Tsukishima said, hoping to distract Bokuto from the smell.

“Oh, he is, but he's wasting all of his potential. He just sits at his desk and plays minesweeper all day long, you know? He doesn't even crave the action.”

“See, now that is a sensible human being,” Tsukishima said.

“You two would probably get along like a house on fire,” Bokuto laughed. “Or maybe not – house on fire sounds too adventurous. Maybe more like...”

“An idyllic garden shed with a little fireplace on which we're grilling corn cobs?”

“Exactly like that,” said Bokuto, interrupting his concentrated stare on the lock to throw a beam at Tsukishima. “Wow, you're good.”

_Okay, but what if I would rather grill corn cobs with you?,_ Tsukishima thought, sliding down the back wall of the elevator to wallow in his own patheticness. And maybe to get an even better view of Bokuto's ass, since he wasn't torturing himself enough yet. 

How – just _how_ \- after years of not even fleetingly being attracted to anybody. _How_ did he encounter one sarcastic, good-looking elevator technician and one endearingly stupid but smoking hot policeman in the same night he looked like a water corpse? 

Maybe this was all part of some show. Where were the cameras? Where was the annoyingly hyperactive moderator jumping out from behind the closed elevator doors to laugh in his face? Maybe it was Bokuto himself – he would actually fit the role. 

Bokuto only fed his suspicion when he let his keys sink slowly, a defeated expression on his face.

“So, I may have some bad news,” he said carefully.

“Let me guess,” said Tsukishima. “None of the keys fit.”

“Pretty much,” said Bokuto.

“And the doors won't open without a key.”

“You got it.”

“And you don't have any reception in here.”

“Bingo.”

“And I'm also on live TV with the whole nation laughing at me right now.”

Bokuto turned around to look at him with a questioning eyebrow raised. “Uhm... I'm not sure if that would be good news or not... I mean, it could be good, since it would mean that we don't have to spend the rest of our night stuck in this little box with me getting closer and closer to being sick from the stench, but unfortunately...”

“Peachy!” said Tsukishima, finding his head nodding with sheer impression. This was certainly the biggest fuck you he had ever gotten from the universe itself. He almost felt like applauding.

“Do you mind?” asked Bokuto, and when Tsukishima looked up at him, he saw him stripping out of his jacket so that he could wrap it around his nose and mouth, leaving him in only a very, very tight uniform shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

Tsukishima was almost proud of himself that he didn't faint right then and there. 

So, the universe _was_ able to up the fuck you even more. Cool. Tsukishima was beyond caring anyway. If this is what it took – one night stuck in a tiny elevator with a mouth-wateringly hot, uniformed, accidentally flirting policeman whom Tsukishima had no chances with... A night filled with being stuck in elevators and only coming _that_ close to having his fantasy of hot elevator sex with a stranger fulfilled. If this was what it took to heal him of his cynicism, then Tsukishima was okay with becoming the biggest sunshine-child the world had ever seen. He would ride into church on a unicycle and praise the lord if he had to. He just needed this torture to end. 

“So...” said Bokuto. “We're gonna have to come up with something to pass the time with, huh?”

Tsukishima was barely able to hold back a groan.

“I got it!” Bokuto smiled after a while. “I spy with my little eye...”

And there went the groan. 

“Okay, okay, we can do something else, geez,” pouted Bokuto. “What do you want to do?”

“Die,” said Tsukishima. 

“That's a bit dramatic, isn't it?”

“Sleep, then.”

Now that Tsukishima thought about it, sleeping was actually a great idea. He was exhausted. This whole adventure, right after a long day of work, had tired him out to the point of almost fainting. Well – Bokuto's biceps _did_ play a role, too – and maybe the lack of oxygen in here, but now that he had realized how tired he was, he was barely able to keep his lids up anymore.

Bokuto seemed to notice it, too.

“Okay, then. Sleep. I will watch over you.”

Tsukishima closed his eyes to Bokuto's warm smile – he fell asleep almost instantly.

~~~

The rest of the night went by in a blur. At some point, the rest of the policemen seemed to notice that Bokuto was taking an awfully long time to return, so they sent out a search party, which eventually freed him from the elevator. 

Tsukishima didn't really remember how they managed to get to the lockers in the end, just that he was sitting there, on the floor, filling out a ton of forms with Bokuto leaned against the wall next to him, chattering away about something or other. 

He was probably just sleepwalking anyway. The next thing he knew, he was climbing out of a police car, well wrapped up in his winter jacket. There was his apartment, only a few steps away. There was his _bed_ \- only a few more minutes until he could let himself fall into it and maybe wake up tomorrow and realize that it had all just been a dream. 

Bokuto said something from where he sat at the steering wheel – probably wishing him a good night. Before Tsukishima had the chance to say something back, the car was already gone. _Bokuto_ was already gone, just as sudden as Kuroo. 

He would probably never see them again. 

What he didn't know was that the universe would have a sudden change of mind and try to make it up to him a few days later.

For now though, it was enough for Tsukishima to just stagger over to the door, knowing there was a bed waiting behind it.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so this chapter has almost nothing to do with my adventure ahahahaha.
> 
> I say “almost” though, bc this is how it ended for me:
> 
> -I never saw hot policeman again. Rip.  
> -I _did_ however meet cute elevator technician!  
>  -So the thing is – I worked like a thousand jobs simultaneously back then, and one of them was at a night club, just manning the wardrobe  
> -one night he suddenly stands before me, eyes wide  
> -i'm like “yeah, I know. I don't actually look greasy and tired all the time”  
> -I get the bartender to give him all the free beer he needs  
> -he spends the whole night next to the wardrobe, flirting with me  
> -gives me his number before I have to leave  
> -I never call him bc that's just who I am  
> -tadaaaa! 
> 
> Ok tho, since Tsukishima in this fic is much less asexual than me, let's give him a slightly different ending!

Ten days. 

That's how long it took the universe to come up with a redemption plan. Tsukishima didn't know where the sudden change of heart came from – maybe some higher being up there had miscalculated Tsukishima's bad karma and was now forced to pay back double. Tsukishima certainly hoped that wasn't the case, because it would mean that there was accounting in heaven, and he didn't know if he was ready for that. 

Not that he would get into heaven to begin with.

He knew that for a fact, because he was a sinful, sinful person – or had become one, ever since Kuroo and Bokuto had somehow found a way into his dreams and wouldn't leave him alone for even a single night. Whenever he closed his eyes, there were lazy grins and blinding smiles. There were drawled words to boil his blood and very inaccurate police uniforms with rolled-up sleeves, there were bedheads and big hands and butts, butts, butts. Seriously, it was frightening. 

What was even more frightening was the fact that Tsukishima didn't even restrict himself to one of them, or at least each of them separately. He had even started dreaming about only the two of them going at each other while Tsukishima sat to the side, watching with his mouth hanging open like a horny teenager. It was embarrassing, really, and he was glad that he didn't believe in mind-reading. 

Still, he didn't tell Yamaguchi that he thought the technician and the policeman who had saved him were hot. Just in case.

Job-wise, things were looking up, at least. He had decided to quit the job at the supermarket. He just wasn't cut out for it. Instead, he had somehow managed to bribe Kunimi into putting in a good word for him at his parents' night club. Tsukishima would rather work as a bartender and have to deal with drunk assholes and working through the night instead of touching another dead fish in his life. At least as a bartender he got to look hot in case he was ever trapped in another elevator. 

And hot he looked. Some of these people never got tired of telling him.

Tsukishima had always known that he had a certain effect on people. Maybe it was his height, or his sharp tongue, or his honest disinterest. But he seemed to have forgotten over the course of his time as a reverse mermaid, and now the compliments were actually able to stroke his ego again. It was a pity that none of the people suddenly gaining interest in him were sassy, mop-headed elevator technicians or ridiculously hot policemen. 

Until one night, they suddenly were.

It was a quiet night, which was uncommon for a Friday, but the only other club in town had somehow managed to book a well-known DJ, which Tsukishima was more than glad about. This was his first week, his first Friday, and he had not been looking forward to it. Maybe tomorrow would be a hectic and stressful night, but right now, it was almost relaxing. He had gotten the hang of the job incredibly fast – much faster than he had gotten used to gutting dead fish anyway. Kunimi's parents were more than happy with him. 

Honestly, it was all going so well that Tsukishima should have been suspicious, but he had let down his guard, making small talk with his co-worker, Kindaichi, and absentmindedly filling up the peanut bowls on the counter. That was when he noticed someone out of the corner of his eyes – someone with a very familiar silhouette, sitting down at the counter, hand already buried in the freshly filled bowl of peanuts. 

Tsukishima turned his head and froze.

It was Kuroo. Kuroo the elevator technician. Kuroo, who held a recurring starring role in his dreams. That mop head couldn't possibly belong to anyone else.

Kuroo wasn't looking at him – hadn't even noticed him yet. He was waving at someone to follow him over to the bar, and a small part in Tsukishima wasn't even surprised when he saw who that person was.

Tsukishima would have liked to believe that this was all just a dream, but he knew better. Kuroo and Bokuto never featured in his dreams without their respective uniforms – maybe Kuroo's was a bit tighter than the original one, but still. If this were a dream, they would definitely be in their uniforms. Or not in any clothes at all. 

This Kuroo, though – this unbelievably real Kuroo – was wearing tight, black pants and a simple black v-neck shirt, despite the biting cold outside. Bokuto, on the other hand, couldn't have looked less like a policeman if he'd actively tried to go undercover. For some inane reason he had chosen a graphic tee with a cutesy whale on it. “Save me” was printed underneath the whale, and Tsukishima could only agree. 

“Save me,” he whispered to himself, just when Kuroo turned around and looked at him.

“So,” said Tsukishima, crossing his arms. “You guys actually knew each other?”

Kuroo opened his mouth, closed it again, furrowed his brows.

Tsukishima realized that they did not recognize him. 

He couldn't really blame them. He looked _very_ different to that awful evening when he had been stuck in the supermarket. He wasn't even wearing his glasses tonight. There was a notable lack of fish anatomy stuck to his person. And he smelled like an actual human being, instead of like a deep sea creature. 

Bokuto and Kuroo were still staring at him, still trying to place him, and Tsukishima suddenly felt powerful. 

“I hope this is not inspired by me,” he said, leaning over the counter to tap on the whale on Bokuto's shirt. Bokuto just continued to gape at him, but Kuroo gave a soft gasp, grasping at Bokuto's arm. Tsukishima wished he had an excuse to do the same.

“No way!” Kuroo breathed, leaning forward as if he had to inspect Tsukishima up close to be sure it was him. “No fucking way!”

“And hello to you, Kuroo,” Tsukishima grinned. 

“Dude!” Kuroo pulled his hand out of the peanut bowl and cleaned it on his shirt. “Just how many jobs are you working?”

“FISH-GUY!” yelled Bokuto, who had finally recognized Tsukishima. He sounded genuinely happy to see him again, so Tsukishima couldn't even be annoyed at the nickname. 

“Not anymore,” he said, straightening himself. “As you can see, I'm a bartender now.”

Both of them were still looking at him like they couldn't quite believe their eyes, and Tsukishima basked in it, for a moment. He saw Kindaichi throw him a weird look from the other side of the bar, but who cared. This moment – this was what Tsukishima had been waiting for. A chance to show these guys that he was _actually good-looking_ , and not a tired, stinking mess. That he was on their level – or above it. Probably above it, if he judged them by the peanut-grease stain on Kuroo's shirt and Bokuto's taste in fashion. 

“So,” he said, when they wouldn't stop staring. “How come you two know each other?”

Kuroo awakened from his daze, looking back at Bokuto as if he'd just remembered he was there. “Oh, right,” he said, clearing his throat. “We met last week, at the Dancing Flamingo. Recognized each other from the incident. Uhm.”

He didn't have to say anything more. Everyone knew that the Dancing Flamingo was the only gay bar anywhere near this town. And Tsukishima knew perfectly well what the pause in his speech meant. He couldn't believe that half of his dreams were being played out in reality all this time, without him knowing. Well. Now he knew. And he wasn't quite sure how he felt about that.

“Romantic,” he commented, turning around to grab two pints from the shelf. “Anyway, I owe you guys a beer, or five. So I hope you can keep up.”

Filling the pints to the brim, he watched them exchange a meaningful look, seemingly having a silent conversation - which was impressive, if they really only knew each other for a week. Tsukishima noticed their thighs touching where they were sitting on the bar stools, and he had to avert his eyes. Maybe this was a dream after all. 

They only turned back to him when he put the beers down before them, crossing his arms again. Both of them were grinning broadly.

“Tsukki...” said Kuroo, as if he were tasting the name on his tongue. “I gotta say. I wouldn't have expected this.”

“'This' being?”

“You're hot,” Bokuto explained helpfully. “Like. Smoking.”

Okay. So the chances of this being a dream were steadily growing. 

“Well aren't you guys smooth,” he said. “You almost make me forget all the fish comments you threw at my head a week ago.”

Kuroo waved his hand as if to chase off Tsukishima's argument. “Come on, we were obviously flirting with you.”

“Really,” drawled Tsukishima, lifting an eyebrow just to show that he could. “Because Bokuto told me – I quote: 'Man, you sure smell'. Then he told me to keep a bigger distance, because he was just about to develop a gag reflex.”

Kuroo threw a proud look at Bokuto – he probably knew all about Bokuto's non-existent gag reflex. “Amazing,” he said, lifting a hand for a high-five. 

“I told you that you were cute!” Bokuto protested – he still high-fived Kuroo though, and Tsukishima rolled his eyes.

“Right. 'Cute'. I really had troubles keeping my pants on after that.” No need to tell them that this actually came close to the truth. Bokuto in his police uniform had been almost irresistible. Bokuto in his save-the-whales shirt... well, he wasn't too bad either, if Tsukishima was being honest. 

Actually – it was pretty endearing. 

“And I even wanted to invite you back home,” said Kuroo. “But you were being shy.” He stuck his tongue out and gave the thumbs down like an actual five-years-old. 

Unfortunately – also endearing. 

“No, you're right. I could barely resist you two hunks. Every night, I dream of you – I can't even think of anything else anymore.”

Should it worry him that the truth could so easily be converted into sarcasm? Probably, but Tsukishima just decided to fill himself a pint to fight all the unnecessary worrying with. His shift was over in five minutes anyway. 

“Hey, hey, Tsukki!” Bokuto said, slightly vibrating on his bar stool. Tsukishima was glad that he was apparently no longer 'fish guy', but he was not too happy about Kuroo's annoying nickname catching on. Bokuto lifted his glass to say cheers. “We'll take you home tonight, okay?”

“Yeah,” said Kuroo, lifting his glass as well. “Then you don't have to dream anymore.” He winked. 

Tsukishima rolled his eyes again, because he just couldn't help it.

But he also couldn't help lifting his own glass and clink it against theirs. 

~~~

They stayed at the bar for two hours, because Kunimi's parents were surprisingly generous with free beer when it came to their employees, and Tsukishima didn't have many other friends he could spoil with this perk. 

Bokuto, despite his built, couldn't hold his liquor at all. Only two pints in, he was giggling and leaning all over Kuroo, sometimes suddenly drifting off and pressing kisses to Kuroo's neck, or shoulders, or whatever body part was in reach. Kuroo halfheartedly shook him off, with a promise of 'later', sending Tsukishima an apologetic look.

Maybe Tsukishima shouldn't have sat on the other side of the table, because he really wanted Bokuto to get handsy with him, too – although he would probably not be able to hold him upright if Bokuto leaned on him with his full weight. 

Over at the bar, Shimizu was currently filling another pint for them – she had probably spotted his glass getting empty again, even though Tsukishima had chosen the booth furthest away from the bar. The free beer was great – his new co-workers observing him pick up two guys at the same time was not so great. At least Shimizu didn't seem to judge him. He even thought that she sent a wink his way, if it weren't for the fact that someone like Shimizu did not _wink_. 

“So, what kind of deep sea witch did you make a deal with to look like that?” Kuroo asked with a smirk around his lips while Bokuto fell into another giggling fit. 

Tsukishima sure was glad for Kuroo's snarky flirting style – it made him feel more controlled, since his brain was able to keep up an interest in working normally. Bokuto had casually intertwined their legs under the table, and without Kuroo here, all Tsukishima would be able to think was ' _hot police guy has his knee between my thighs, hot police guy has his knee between my thighs!!'_

“You have it the wrong way round – that time you met me at the supermarket I was cursed by a witch to look like a fishman. But in reality, I always look like this.”

“Thad cand be right,” Bokuto slurred, leaning over the table to throw him a smile. “If this... this is normal, then you'd be... like... a famous model!”

“Oh my God,” said Tsukishima – he had no idea how to react to Bokuto's almost aggressively forward flirting, so he fled from the booth to get the pints waiting for him by the bar. “I really need more beer for this,” he said, walking away. He could hear Kuroo laugh behind him.

Maybe it was a bit embarrassing to get spooked so easily, but then it wasn't every day that a guy who may as well have escaped from a strip club came on to him like that. Shimizu sent him a knowing look when he took the beers from her. 

“They seem nice,” she said in her usual soft voice, which almost wasn't audible despite the bar being close to empty. 

“A bit too nice, if you ask me,” Tsukishima mumbled back. Well – Bokuto, at least. Kuroo was still smirking at him from across the bar. Tsukishima quickly took a sip from his beer before he went back to their table. 

“Good, you only brought two beers – Bokuto shouldn't drink anymore,” said Kuroo, once Tsukishima put the beer down before him. “He just whispered to me that he thinks he's in love.”

“With you,” Bokuto clarified, nodding gravely. 

Tsukishima cocked an eyebrow at him. “This is really romantic and all, but aren't you kind of sitting in Kuroo's lap right now?”

“Kuroo is my soulmade!” explained Bokuto, turning to press another kiss to Kuroo's cheek. “We med through fade!”

“Fate seems to be an appropriate way to describe this,” Kuroo shrugged. “I really don't know how else the three of us would end up sitting here right now.”

“It's like a fairy tale,” Tsukishima commented dryly. 

“Pretty much.” Kuroo grinned and clinked his glass against Tsukishima's. “So, Tsukki – I hope you're ready for your happy ending.”

~~~

Bokuto's place was the closest, so that's where they decided to go. Since Bokuto had just moved there, he wasn't too good with finding his way back while being drunk, but luckily, Kuroo had been to his place before, and he still remembered the address. 

Tsukishima couldn't quite believe that he was actually going home with two guys after only one evening. Well – two evenings, if you counted the incident – but Tsukishima was still trying to forget that, so he refused to count it. 

Bokuto and Kuroo had taken him in between themselves, Bokuto's arm wrapped around his waist, Kuroo's resting heavily on his shoulders. It would have been nicer if both of them hadn't tried to use him as a walking cane. 

But it was still pretty nice. Especially since Bokuto couldn't stop lolling his head on Tsukishima's shoulder whenever he had to babble something into his ear, forgetting what he wanted to say halfway through and just pressing his mouth against Tsukishima's skin instead. His mouth was hot in the cold winter air, and Tsukishima couldn't wait to meet it in a real kiss soon. 

“How much longer?” he asked Kuroo. Seriously, they should have just taken a cab, even if the town was small enough to reach everything by foot. 

“Should be somewhere around here,” said Kuroo. His eyelids looked heavier than before, the alcohol finally taking effect. The hand he had thrown over Tsukishima's shoulder was playing with a strand of Bokuto's hair, resulting in a happy hum from Bokuto's side. “I think that block over there?” Kuroo nodded his head towards a generic looking apartment building. There were about five others that looked the same, right next to it.

“Are you sure?” Tsukishima asked warily. 

“I'm not that drunk!” Kuroo assured him. “I know where I'm going!”

“'course you do,” said Tsukishima – he didn't really have a say in the matter, since he was still caught in between them, and they were both stumbling towards the building Kuroo had pointed out. 

“Your keys, Bokuto,” Kuroo said, once they had reached the door, and Bokuto pulled out a key chain with at least twenty keys dangling from it. 

Tsukishima groaned. “Please tell me you know which one opens this door!” 

“I'll ged... used soon. To them,” Bokuto babbled, trying to push something that looked like a letterbox key into the lock. 

“Hurry up!” said Tsukishima – he really didn't have that much patience left, especially with Kuroo's hand sneaking around his waist to replace Bokuto's. He startled when the light inside suddenly went on, and footsteps could be heard. 

“We're in luck!” Kuroo beamed. “Someone's coming out.”

Indeed, the door opened up to a couple of teenagers whose eyes widened with fear at being met by the door by three tall strangers. They were probably sneaking out. Not that Tsukishima cared – he shouldered past them, glad to finally enter a warm building instead of staggering around in the cold. 

Bokuto and Kuroo stumbled in after him, and now that they were inside, forgot that the staircase was technically still considered a public space. When Tsukishima turned around, Kuroo was pressed up against a wall, arms thrown around Bokuto's head so tightly that he couldn't even see them making out. 

“Hey!” he snapped. “We aren't there yet! Plus, there are minors around!”

The teenagers were still frozen in shock, observing the spectacle they had opened the door up to. Bokuto waved a hand in their direction, going, “Shoo!”, and Kuroo took the chance of his mouth being free to turn to Tsukishima.

“He lives on the top floor, so we'll take the elevator.”

Tsukishima hadn't even noticed the elevator, but it was apparently what Kuroo and Bokuto were leaning against right now, because a loud 'ping' could be heard and then the wall behind Kuroo's back opened up, the both of them falling right inside. 

“Didn't you hear?” Tsukishima said to the teenagers, who still hadn't left. “Shoo!”

His glare finally managed to make them turn on their heels and flee into the night, and Tsukishima followed the giggling and rustling sounds coming from the elevator, squeezing himself in behind Bokuto. He was not a big fan of elevators anymore, but being squeezed in between those two wasn't that bad. Better than being stuck with a bag full of fish guts anyway. 

In fact, he noticed, this came pretty close to his actual elevator sex fantasy.

Kuroo seemed to be reading his mind. “It's nice and cozy in here,” he said, shooting Tsukishima a grin. Bokuto was attached to his neck like some sort of leech. A really sexy leech. 

Tsukishima might have had a bit too much to drink after all.

“The ride will only take a few seconds,” Tsukishima said, turning around to the panel and pressing the button for the top floor – which happened to be the fifth floor, so definitely not enough time to start getting undressed, no matter how slow this rusty old machine was. “Just keep it in your pants for another minute.”

“No need to,” Kuroo moaned, just as the elevator rattled into motion. Bokuto apparently took Tsukishima's words as some sort of challenge, because he was already working on opening Kuroo's pants. It looked more complicated than it should, but Kuroo didn't seem to mind. He had his head thrown back to give Bokuto better access to his throat, and Tsukishima couldn't help but stare, couldn't help but get distracted – until Kuroo said, “I'm an elevator technician,” and Tsukishima wondered what that had anything to do with it. 

He realized three seconds later, when the elevator jerked to a sudden halt, the little box shaking and quaking in the air. Tsukishima's unbelieving eyes fell onto Kuroo's hand, which was holding a bunch of cables.

A bunch of cables which he had apparently just _wrenched_ out of the panel.

“Looks like we're trapped,” said Kuroo, his grin flashing up again and again in the flickering light. 

Tsukishima's jaw fell open – he wasn't sure if he was screaming or not – probably not, because he could still hear Bokuto's giggle, like – Fuck, it should not be legal for a guy like that to _giggle_ this much, but Bokuto kept ignoring his status as a hot policeman stripper by wearing stupid shirts and having a stupid laugh, and dropping to his stupid knees, and-

Okay, so the next part was more to Tsukishima's liking, or would have been, if he hadn't been trapped in an old rusty elevator with two actual _lunatics_.

“You're crazy!” he said, voice hoarse. “You are actually crazy. I should have never... God, I knew you guys for a _day_ , and I just went home with you, what is _wrong_ with me? I'm gonna die here! I'm gonna die-”

“Shhhhh,” said Bokuto, unashamedly nuzzling his cheeks against Kuroo's crotch. He was looking up at Tsukishima with half-lidded eyes, a lazy smile playing on his lips. His task of opening the pants had progressed a little – the black jeans were halfway down Kuroo's thighs, and Bokuto was just rubbing his face on a pair of tight, red boxer shorts. “We have... idds all under condrol!” 

“Nothing is under...” 

Tsukishima got sidetracked by the view of Bokuto pressing his open mouth against the very obvious bulge in Kuroo's boxer shorts. 

“Control...” he added, like an afterthought. “Fuck.”

How did Bokuto even manage to look hotter than in his dreams? He wasn't even wearing his uniform, and yet... 

Both Bokuto's and Kuroo's jackets lay abandoned on the floor – it had been the first thing both of them took off when they had fallen into the elevator, and now all they were wearing were their shirts – Kuroo's loose and long, pooling on Bokuto's head that was still pressed against his crotch – Bokuto's tight and short, showing a generous amount of skin as he was crouching on the floor, mouth sucking on the fabric of Kuroo's boxers. 

The light was still flickering, trying to remind Tsukishima of the predicament he had once again managed to get himself into.

The problem was just that, with every sound escaping from Kuroo's mouth, he cared a little less.

“Hmmm, Dsukki,” mumbled Bokuto, not even bothering to pull away from Kuroo's crotch.

Tsukishima blinked down at him, forgetting how to breathe for a second.

“Dsukki – will you still kiss me after I had Kuroo's dick in my mouth?” Bokuto asked. “Because otherwise, we should... we should now. Kiss I mean. Can we?”

_Can_ they! Did Bokuto seriously have to ask? Was Tsukishima the only one who was aware of his own embarrassing loss of self-control? 

Probably not, judging from the smirk Kuroo was sending his way.

“You didn't just come with us to watch, did you?” Kuroo asked. He was obviously short of breath, which was just unfair – his sassiness was sexy enough on its own, it didn't need the advantage of sounding so sinful. 

“I didn't come with you to get caught in another elevator either!” said Tsukishima, surprised that he was still able to form coherent sentences. 

“We're not caught. I can get us out of here no problem,” Kuroo panted. Bokuto had already gotten distracted by the bulge in his face, and turned back to mouth at it. Tsukishima didn't really mind, because if he was being honest, Kuroo's taste on Bokuto's lips probably wouldn't make their kiss less enjoyable. Quite the opposite, in fact. 

He really was a sinful, sinful person.

“Fuck, Bokuto, stop teasing already!” Kuroo protested, slumping down a little, his knees too weak to hold him upright. “Just... unpack it!”

“Unpack it...” Tsukishima repeated – he still couldn't believe that he actually found these guys hot. What was _wrong_ with him?

The cables Kuroo had still held on to finally fell to the floor when Bokuto pushed down the boxer shorts to expose his cock, Kuroo's hands bracing themselves on Bokuto's head instead. The elevator was too small for him to slump all the way to the floor, but it sounded like the little box would soon fall apart if they pressed against the walls any more. 

Tsukishima really should have used his remaining brain cells to find a way out of here before they fell down the elevator shaft, but instead he used them to snark at Kuroo.

“You're the worst elevator technician I've ever seen – is this what Nekoma elevators usually does – going around breaking elevators so that they have something to fix?”

“Please, Tsukki – you don't.. ah... you don't expect me to banter with you right now, when my cock is in... fuck, Bokuto!”

Fuck, Bokuto, indeed – he hadn't been lying when he had said that he didn't have a gag reflex. His eyes were tearing up a little, but otherwise there was no indication of him even feeling the cock that was pushed all the way down his throat to the point where Tsukishima could even see the outlines of it shaping Bokuto's neck – it was simultaneously the most fascinating and nastiest thing Tsukishima had ever seen, and he started wondering if he wasn't in way over his head with these two. 

This was not a thing he usually did. He never went to any gay bars, he never met any guys who looked like they belonged in a porno, he had never had a one night stand in his life – he wasn't even a particularly sexual person until Kuroo and Bokuto crashed his dreams with their goddamned uniforms and muscles. 

And yet he couldn't tear his eyes away from the scene that his own imagination hadn't even been able to come up with. 

Kuroo's eyes were partly closed, partly rolling back so that there were only white flashes visible – Tsukishima couldn't really blame him – what Bokuto did to his cock looked unreal. He was going at it with a sloppiness that could only stem from the alcohol, or his natural state as a human disaster. In any case, Tsukishima was impressed. And horny. He couldn't really deny that anymore.

“Fuckkkk, Bokuto, slow down, or I swear I'm gonna...”

“Isn't that kind of what he's trying to accomplish?” Tsukishima commented, leaning back against the wall, that was creaking even more under his weight, but he didn't care anymore. He just needed something to support him. 

Kuroo gave a drawn-out whine, begging Tsukishima to shut up and Bokuto to slow down at the same time, but none of them really listened.

“You look like a mess,” Tsukishima said. “And I mean like – more so than usual.”

Kuroo's head lolled to the side, sending him a glare through half-lidded eyes, body rocking back and forth in time with Bokuto's mouth swallowing him up and releasing him again. He was reaching out a hand – it looked like he was struggling with only that motion, but the elevator was small, and Tsukishima wasn't that far away. Kuroo's hand managed to hook around the back of his neck, and then tried to pull him in – too weak to actually budge him, but Tsukishima was getting impatient anyway, so he leaned towards Kuroo, leaned in for a kiss that they almost missed because Kuroo was still rocking back and forth.

How was it even possible to blow someone with so much energy that they were shaking?

Tsukishima's lips didn't miss by much – it could still be considered a kiss, technically, if Kuroo were in a state where he could concentrate more. As it was, though, he was just clinging to Tsukishima so that his trembling legs wouldn't give up under him. Kuroo's lips didn't move much, except to let out a moan, a gasp, sometimes even a fragment of a sentence. This was fine though – Tsukishima gladly received those sounds with his mouth, lips searching for contact. Kuroo tasted of beer and smelled of winter, cold and sharp. It suited him well.

“I'm... I'm gonna...” Kuroo panted, breaking away from Tsukishima for only a second before Tsukishima pulled him in again. It was already clear that Bokuto wouldn't mind swallowing, and Tsukishima really wanted to taste the sound of Kuroo's orgasm. 

It was more than Tsukishima could have hoped for. Kuroo usually had an air of control and cockiness about him, and seeing it broken like that, feeling his fingers cling to Tsukishima's jacket, his head jerking forward, low sound escaping his throat – it was delicious. 

Delicious for about ten seconds, then there was suddenly a grin back on Kuroo's lips, even though he was so weak that he immediately slid down the back of the wall as soon as Bokuto got up. They were in disarray for a moment – Tsukishima almost got pulled down with him, Bokuto tried to catch him halfway through standing up, but collided with Tsukishima and forgot to get a hold of Kuroo. In the end, Kuroo just lay on the floor, laughing while he tucked himself back into his jeans.

“Fuck, that was amazing!” he panted, when he was finally done with laughing. “How the fuck are you two even single. _Were_ you two even single, because I will never let you out of this elevator if you don't promise to date me starting immediately.”

“Really?” said Tsukishima. “You're gonna blackmail us into dating? Just how drunk are you anyway?”

“Extremely,” said Kuroo, sending him a wink. “Don't worry though, I'm really a gentleman.”

“Fuck off. You're drunk.” Tsukishima turned to Bokuto, whose hands were clasping at the little whale over his heart, like he had just witnessed the most romantic thing in his life. “Seriously?” Tsukishima asked.

“Sorry!” said Bokuto. He looked like he had suddenly gained a lot of energy, and he wasn't slurring anymore, either. Just _what_ was in Kuroo's sperm? Tsukishima made a face for even thinking about it. “Hey, Tsukki, you want a taste?”

“Not if you phrase it like that,” Tsukishima said, but he didn't push Bokuto away when he pressed him against the creaking elevator wall, leaning in to slide his lips over Tsukishima's. 

This was the first real kiss Tsukishima had gotten all evening long, and he relished it – Bokuto's strong arms encircling him, sneaking past the thick winter jacket to grope at his buttocks. Bokuto's tongue slipping past his lips, spreading the taste of beer and _Kuroo_ , and once again Tsukishima was too fascinated to be put off, so he licked into Bokuto's mouth to get more of it. He wanted more, more of everything they wanted to give – and yet, when he felt Bokuto's hands go to the front of his jeans, he broke away from the kiss.

“Not yet,” he panted, head resting on Bokuto's shoulder for support. “Not here. I... I want you to... to fuck me, properly. In your bed. We can just put Kuroo in a corner, he's useless anyway.”

There was some more cackling coming from the floor, and Tsukishima couldn't help but hide a grin in Bokuto's shoulder. 

“You'd be surprised!” said Kuroo. “But if you want to get fucked so bad, we should probably get out of here soon.”

Tsukishima lightly kicked at him. “No shit!” he said, suppressing a moan, because Bokuto couldn't sit still for a single second, and was already sucking a hickey to the side of his neck. “Then start repairing this damn elevator!”

“Ah, ah, ah!” said Kuroo, shaking his finger. “Remember how I was trying to blackmail you?”

“Kuroo, I swear to God-”

“I want a proper answer, come on!” said Kuroo. “I was just joking with the blackmail, but the question is still valid.”

Tsukishima caught Bokuto's head between his fingers and pulled him off his neck, pressing a short kiss to his mouth before he crouched down to look at Kuroo. “I don't remember a question, actually. So how about you do this properly, hm?”

“Fine!” groaned Kuroo. “Tsukki, would you maybe consider double-dating me and Bokuto, because damn – we're obviously all into each other and when does something like this even happen? We can't miss this chance, you know?”

“Very convincing,” Tsukishima said, but he leaned in to properly kiss Kuroo anyway. It was sweeter than he would have expected from him, no tongue, just slick lips sliding over each other, one hand lying on the back of Tsukishima's neck, the other grabbing a hold on his jacket, pulling him closer. The elevator rattled when Bokuto let himself fall down to the floor next to them, hugging Tsukishima from behind. 

“Fine then,” Tsukishima finally panted, when they broke away from each other. “I will... consider it.”

“You tease,” Kuroo groaned.

“It's your own fault for phrasing the question like that. Anyway – I won't even consider it if you don't get us out of here immediately!”

“Right, right!” Kuroo took a while to fight himself back onto his feet, patting Bokuto's shoulder when he was finally done. “Hey, buddy – open the door for us, will you?”

“Sure thing, babe!”

Tsukishima didn't really know what exactly he was supposed to focus on here, but by the time he came back to himself, Bokuto had already pushed the closed elevator doors apart. The bottom half of the box led out into the hallway – they just had to jump a little.

“This is not repairing!” Tsukishima protested, watching how Bokuto slid out into the hallway, opening his arms to help them down. 

“So what?” said Kuroo while he let Bokuto pull him out of the elevator. “We're out of here – and I'll just repair it tomorrow. Or do you seriously want to wait for several hours?”

“Congratulations. I'm already regretting everything,” Tsukishima groaned.

That was a lie, of course. He certainly didn't regret that Bokuto took him into his amazing arms to help him down from the elevator, and he also didn't regret them stumbling up the rest of the stairs, leaving half of their jackets and clothes behind, and he also didn't regret the multiple pairs of hands tugging at him, or the two mouths pulling him in for a kiss at every corner they turned, or the excited giggle from one side and the self-satisfied cackle from the other. 

He did kind of regret the time spent waiting before Bokuto's closed door while Bokuto tried his gazillion keys on it, but only because it meant that Bokuto's hands were not touching him at that moment. 

“Just kick it in!” said Kuroo, when they were still standing outside five minutes later. 

Bokuto angrily kicked the door – Tsukishima really hoped that he didn't intend on taking Kuroo's words seriously.

“Wh- who's there?” came a squeak from behind the door.

Tsukishima and Kuroo exchanged a surprised look. 

That was unexpected.

What was even more unexpected was that the voice sounded kind of familiar.

“POLICE!” barked Bokuto, who hadn't even stopped to wonder why someone would be in his apartment in the middle of the night. 

“Oh shit,” whispered Kuroo, but it was already too late. Bokuto's police voice was amazingly convincing – Tsukishima didn't really know why else the girl behind the door would have actually opened it.

As she was bound to do, she was holding a mop.

“We really need to get you a baseball bat,” said Kuroo, after a moment of awkward silence. 

Yachi looked back at him, eyes wide with horror. Tsukishima pressed his eyes closed right before she started screaming and noticed too late that this wouldn't really save him from hearing damage. 

“WRONG HOUSE!” Bokuto yelled, turning around to simply sprint away – Tsukishima considered trying to explain the situation, but then he realized that there was no believable explanation to begin with, so he ran, throwing a last “so so sorry” over his shoulders. Kuroo, who was flying down the stairs behind him, was probably the only one to hear it anyway.

If Tsukishima survived his two new boyfriends, and the embarrassment of a restraining order, then he already knew what was next on his list.

He really needed to move to a bigger town.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT IS DONE!
> 
> Thank you siredtosourwolf for the patience – this took much longer than I had anticipated :3 Once again, I must remind everyone to go read her fics!!!
> 
> Same goes for Sarolonde, who is such an amazing writer and who sacrificed valuable bed time to check this thing for errors before I uploaded it! 
> 
> You can find me on tumblr btw, I keep forgetting to mention that. 
> 
> And thank you to everyone who read and/or commented on this fic! You guys are the best :D


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